Well, I've survived the first three weeks of teaching, and I'm starting to find the rhythm. As you can imagine, the days are packed and very busy. The school has a schedule of when to give tests so the students and parents can always be prepared for them. We always have reading tests on Thursdays, and a Spelling quiz and Bible quiz on Fridays. This week we also had a Math test on Friday, so this weekend I had six different assignments and tests to grade, which was vastly exhilarating. I've also got activities almost every day of the week, hence the recent stagnation in the frequency of my blog posts.
There are three fifth grade teachers on our team. One is Mr. Newton, who is also a new teacher and happens to be my roommate here. He taught fifth grade for three years in Oklahoma before coming here. The other is Miss Nyhoff, who taught in fifth grade here last year. She's our team leader, meaning we have permission to ask her eleven thousand questions and expect her to know the answers, which she usually does. We split up the lesson planning, so I am in charge of planning Reading, Spelling, Writing, and Grammar. We use a textbook very similar to the one I used for student teaching last year, so I'm used to the organization of it, which is nice. The school is only recently getting on the bandwagon with this whole computer fad, so most of the reading tests do not exist in digital form, so part of my job is to rewrite them and save them on the school's network. I think I'll put "retyping reading tests" on my Retrospective Bucket List...
One interesting thing about my schedule is that since I work at a bilingual school, the students take a Spanish language class and a Honduran social studies class every day, neither of which are taught by me. This means that for one hour a day, a Honduran teacher comes into my classroom and teaches my students. So I get the privilege of fleeing my classroom to attempt to be productive in the teachers' lounge, or sometimes outside at a picnic table. I've begun to realize that I need to keep a list of things that I need to get done, but I need to also signify whether the task requires my computer and/or the internet. On any given day or hour, the internet could decide to work or not work, or work just long enough to convince the person trying to use it that he should spend most of his free time waiting for it to work or attempting in vain to fix it. My solution is to bring tasks of varying dependence on technology that could be accomplished without the internet. I imagine I will eventually master the art of switching effortlessly between my tasks as internet availability changes. Flexibility is a virtue that I am learning to value more than I ever would have guessed...
Oh, and remember the whole Journey to Learning door decoration? Well it turns out we're supposed to re-decorate every month. Honduras' Independence Day is on September 15th (this Thursday), so everyone's door decorations for this month are blue and white with stars. We usually have students' parents help us, but all the moms for my class told me they didn't think they were artistically inclined enough to design the door. So this month I did some of it myself, but then I had help from some moms from Mr. Newton's class. Here's what we came up with - that's what the Honduran flag looks like, trust me!
So, I would say that I am starting to get the hang of this whole teaching thing. I've still got a lot to figure out, but between the grading, the kids, the scheduling, the activities, and the lesson plans, I'm not only surviving but having a great time living in Honduras! I have an album with lots more pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos
We get a few days off of school at the end of this week, so we'll be going on some sort of epic adventure! Stay tuned for an update!
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